When veterans get together and talk about what happened to them in the war, that is a way for them to cope with trauma. When people ask: “Where have you been on 9/11?”, that is coping with trauma, too. In fact, it is an odd question — what does it matter? I recall asking it for the first time somewhat later in 2001. 20 years later, the same question is still being asked and I have yet to hear the answer “I don’t remember”. We have all been witnesses to something that has deeply shaken and unsettled us in our internal convictions about humanity. We can impossibly forget it, so we have been reviving and reliving it again and again over the years.

The incredible fear that the passengers and crews in the planes must have felt. The desperation of the people in the towers whose only decision left was whether to suffocate and burn or to fall to their deaths. The people vanishing in the gigantic dust clouds from the collapsing towers while they were trying to escape and to help. The horrors of the friends and families of the victims. The rage of everyone witnessing this act at those who had planned and executed it with precisely this intention in cold blood.

One generation’s pivotal moment

Especially if you were young, witnessing the 11th of September 2001 could be summed up into one essential disbelief: That people are not capable of doing something like that — when they had in fact just done it in plain sight of the world. Many generations have a pivotal moment like this when they are forced to make a realization about the wickedness that human existence can cause, from concentration camps in Germany over burning villages in Southeast Asia to mass murder sites around Srebrenica. 9/11 was one generation’s moment.

I was born in the mid-1980s, which puts me into these undefinable sociological borderlands between Generation X and the Millennials. If asked what distinguishes me from a Generation X type, I would reply that Kurt Cobain killed himself when I was nine. If asked why I do not consider myself a Millennial, I would argue that I remember 9/11.

That is what the people from my birth cohort have in common: We were just about to become aware of the world in the wider sense, looking at it still quite naively. Of course, we already knew there were wars and terror attacks happening in some places at the globe. But they still seemed far away from the relative tranquility of our early teenage years.

Our transition to the perception of the world as something fundamentally different than we had thought before was not gradual. It happened radically on this day in September. I recall from that day that one of my hands was constantly trembling, something that had never happened before. But it seemed appropriate for the occasion. There was no doubt that this was big — with consequences that would expand over years if not decades. 9/11 changed us as much as it changed the world which we had been living in.

At the same day, there was the sudden prospect of a War Against Terror, which was estimated to last up to ten years, a drastic underestimate. Actual wars were then started, declared won, eventually seen declining into an unending, bloody mess governed by improvised explosive devices, suicide attacks, tortures, and drone strikes. If 9/11 had demonstrated to us that there existed evil in the world on a scale we had not even imagined before, looking at the world during the decade that followed did not leave us with the impression that the good causes would eventually prevail — if there actually were any of them.

The cultural shift that followed

The gloom that 9/11 threw on the world was reflected in a cultural shift during the early 2000s. The late 90s had been a colorful spectacle of trash, an absurd celebration of the world united in being able to enjoy the merits of reality TV. There was nothing in the world to be taken seriously. The President of the United States was implicated in an affair about whether oral intercourse with a White House intern constituted a sexual relationship. More intellectually-minded observers called it the “End of History”. But it was not intended to last.

Obviously, the 2000s still had their share of absurdity and trash. But as a teenager, this period had an undertone of darkness blended into the usual anger, confusion, and sadness that teenagers of any generation get to experience quite unpreparedly. In these years, fans of rock music such as myself were drawn to a whole new repertory of bands that were all pretty angry, depressing, and dark. Hitting the Zeitgeist with dropped guitar tunings and dissonant riffs, they rose to mainstream attention.

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington became an emblematic character of that period, expressing his traumata from childhood in the band’s lyrics. While many people who could identify with his music when growing up had been able to move on from there, Bennington could not. After he had ended his own life in 2017, it felt like a chapter from the past had been closed. If 9/11 marked a generation’s end of its childhood, Bennington’s death marked the end of its adolescence.

Closing the chapters

Another painstaking chapter from the past came to an end more recently with the Western retreat from Afghanistan. While many rational reasons for withdrawing can be presented, it might not have been a coincidence that some commentators, who roughly fit into the 9/11 generational cohort, have expressed a certain degree of relief over the retreat. The War in Afghanistan has been with us as long as 9/11 has been. In fact, 9/11 was the only reason why we ever got involved in Afghanistan. The war has been present essentially during our entire adult lifetime up to now. Maybe Generation 9/11 thought it was about time to be done with it.

Trump the President has fought for four years to be recognized as a Great Statesman and to be remembered as one of the greatest Presidents in the history of the USA. Now, he is presiding over one of the most depressing departures from the White House in the country’s modern history. The fault is not in the stars — the faults of the protagonist of this American drama have been completely sufficient.

A ruthless plan behind the election fraud claims

One may even question whether triggering the violence in the Capitol on January 6 was deliberately intended by Trump. The strategy of the closest Trump circle in the run-up to the riot probably rather aimed at creating so much confusion and doubt about the election outcome that a sufficient number of Republicans in the Senate would object to the certification of the electoral college. This would have offered the state legislatures the possibility of selecting their own electors. If several states with Republican majorities in their legislatures but where Biden had won the majority of the popular vote had then decided to ignore the electorate and to choose Trump-friendly electors, the electoral college vote might have been swung in favor of Trump, at least theoretically. CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria had already considered this possible development in September 2020, while the New York Times discussed it just one day before the decisive vote in Congress.

Trump would have liked to exploit the planned protest near the Capitol to build up pressure on the Senators within in order for them not to certify the electoral college. This would have, at least in imaginary ways, opened up a path for Trump to victory and a second term — quite like the screenplays of certain American movie productions having the hero to eventually overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his way despite all odds.

2020 — the year of bad omens for Trump

But things turned out differently. Almost the entire year of 2020 had already indicated Trump’s demise by a number of bad omens. While the President could still celebrate the acquittal in the (first) impeachment procedure and economic records at the beginning of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic then forced him into a role for which he was obviously ill-suited. As agonizing as the pandemic dragged on over the course of the election year, as merciless did it tempt Trump to present himself as the wrong President at the wrong time. His hopes into the ‘miracle drug’ hydroxychloroquine were disappointed. While he has not advised injecting bleach, his constant fights with the press took up much more room than the communication of health risks. While it is further not proven that Trump’s COVID-19 infection was caused by his negligence of the precautions, him falling ill with COVID-19 neatly fit the public’s perception that the President was not taking the pandemic seriously enough. COVID-19 cranked out bad headlines and pictures for Trump non-stop.

During the entirety of 2020, what turned out to be fatal for Trump and his political legacy were precisely the character traits and behavior patterns that both his opponents and even more neutral commentators had always criticized: Too little grandeur and poor manners, too lax handling of the facts, too risky gambling with the extremists, too little respect for the democratic institutions.

The tragic irony of the President’s downfall

The tragic irony in the tradition of an English poet here is that the same characteristics and talents that had initially enabled Trump’s rise to power later sealed his political fate and downfall. Trump has often and accurately been described as a master of persuasion. Remember that a single Twitter account was sufficient for him to communicate entire narratives about America and his policies to millions of voters and past the traditional media. His packed campaign rallies across the country offered him the possibility of testing new slogans and nicknames in real-time interaction with thousands of his supporters.

On January 6 then, Trump had not persuaded too few, but too many of his most zealotic attendees of the ‘Save America’ rally that the election was just about to be stolen in the Capitol, inciting them to prevent this from happening. The ‘alternative facts’ regarding the election outcome that Trump had been spreading among his supporters again and again since weeks suddenly took on a life of their own. The pseudo-reality of a fraudulent-but-still-savable election resulted in an unambiguous reality of violence. Regarding his persuasion talents, Trump has hence not at all fallen victim to his flagging success — he has in fact become a victim of his own success.

While Trump had called explicitly for a peaceful protest in his rally speech — besides a lot of combative and inflammatory remarks — he still carries responsibility for the violence that his zealotic supporters felt legitimated to commit and for the poor handling of the situation on January 6 overall. Furthermore, already the attempt to overturn the result of a legitimate election by pressuring lawmakers with the help of street protests constitutes a grave violation of democratic norms, even if the protests had remained peaceful.

The Trump Presidency, which derived part of its legitimacy from the promise of demolishing the predominant political culture, has now been receiving the wrecking ball treatment itself. His enemies can be content: Since the deadly riots in the Capitol, their belief that Trump has been governing as a quasi-fascist dictator from day one has been retroactively vindicated. With Trump leaving office now, the reasons for contradicting them have lapsed as well.

A very Trumpian farewell

Trump will not leave Washington, D.C. behind on a conciliatory note. Neither will he welcome his successor Joe Biden at the White House, nor will he be seen off by Biden prior to his departure into presidential retirement. Not under any circumstances, Trump will join the decorative ranks of former Presidents in the background of Biden’s inauguration. It was hard to imagine anyway.

Der Präsident, der vier Jahre lang darum gekämpft hat, als großer Staatsmann anerkannt zu werden und der als einer der größten Präsidenten der USA in Erinnerung bleiben wollte, steht nun einem der deprimierendsten Abschiede aus dem Weißen Haus in der modernen Geschichte des Landes vor. Nicht durch die Schuld der Sterne ist es so gekommen, die Fehler des Protagonisten dieses amerikanischen Dramas haben vollkommen genügt.

Ein skrupelloser Plan hinter den Vorwürfen des Wahlbetrugs

Dabei darf sogar bezweifelt werden, dass das Auslösen von Gewalt im Kapitol am 6. Januar in Trumps bewusster Absicht lag. Die Strategie des engsten Trump-Teams im Vorfeld der Unruhen im Kapitol zielte wohl vielmehr darauf ab, so viel Verwirrung und Zweifel über die Wahlergebnisse zu erzeugen, dass die Republikaner im Kongress die Zertifizierung des Wahlmännergremiums ablehnen würden. Dies hätte den Parlamenten der einzelnen Bundesstaaten die Möglichkeit eröffnet, die Wahlmänner des jeweiligen Bundesstaates selbst zu bestimmen. Hätten dann mehrere Bundesstaaten mit republikanischen Parlamentsmehrheiten, in denen aber Joe Biden die Mehrheit der Wählerstimmen erhalten hatte, den Wählerwillen unter Verweis auf möglichen Wahlbetrug ignoriert und Trump-freundliche Wahlmänner entsandt, so hätte das Gesamtergebnis der Wahlmännerstimmen zumindest theoretisch noch zugunsten Trumps gedreht werden können. Ein für CNN tätiger Analyst hatte diese mögliche Entwicklung bereits im September angedeutet, während die New York Times sie nur einen Tag vor der entscheidenden Abstimmung und damit auch nur einen Tag vor dem Sturm auf das Kapitol erneut diskutierte.

Den in nächster Nähe des Kapitols geplanten Protests hätte Trump gerne genutzt, um von außen Druck auf die Senatoren auszuüben, die Wahlmännerstimmen nicht zu zertifizieren. Dies hätte Trump dann zumindest in der Vorstellung auf den letzten Millimetern vor der Niederlage doch noch den Sieg ermöglicht — genauso wie der amerikanische Film seine Helden gerne unüberwindbar scheinende Herausforderungen und Hindernisse gegen alle Erwartungen bewältigen lässt.

2020 — das Jahr der schlechten Omen für Trump

Doch es kam anders. Fast das gesamte Jahr 2020 deutete Trumps Niedergang bereits mit allerlei schlechten Omen an. Konnte der Präsident zu Beginn noch den Freispruch im Amtsenthebungsverfahren und wirtschaftliche Rekordleistungen feiern, so zwang ihn die Corona-Pandemie in eine Rolle, für die er denkbar ungeeignet war. So quälend, wie sich die Pandemie über das Wahljahr 2020 hinzog, so unerbittlich verleitete sie Trump dazu, sich als der falsche Präsident zur falschen Zeit darzustellen. Seine Hoffnung auf das Wundermittel Hydroxychloroquin wurden enttäuscht. Zwar hat er nicht dazu geraten, Bleichmittel zu injizieren, jedoch nahmen seine Streitereien mit der Presse den größeren Raum im Vergleich zur Kommunikation der Gesundheitsrisiken ein. Auch wenn nicht erwiesen ist, dass Trump sich seine COVID-19-Erkrankung durch eigene Unvorsichtigkeit zugezogen hat, so passte die Erkrankung dennoch exakt zum in der Öffentlichkeit entstandenen Eindruck, der Präsident nehme die Pandemie nicht ernst genug. Die Pandemie erzeugte politisch schlechte Bilder am laufenden Band.

Im gesamten Jahr 2020 wurden Trump und seinem politischen Erbe letztlich genau diejenigen Charakterzüge und Verhaltensweisen zum Verhängnis, die seine Gegner, aber auch ihm nicht grundsätzlich feindlich gesinnte Kommentatoren ihm immer nachgesagt hatten: Zu wenig Größe und zu schlechte Manieren, um eine Niederlage anzuerkennen, zu laxer Umgang mit den Fakten, zu riskantes Spiel mit den Extremisten und zu wenig Respekt vor den demokratischen Institutionen.

Die tragische Ironie im Fall des Präsidenten

Die tragische Ironie, an der ein englischer Dichter seine Freude gehabt hätte, besteht darin, dass es dieselben Eigenschaften und auch Talente Trumps waren, die seinen politischen Aufstieg und Erfolg überhaupt erst ermöglicht hatten, die später seinen politischen Absturz besiegeln sollten. Ein einzelner Twitter-Account genügte ihm, um für Millionen Wähler ganze Narrative über Amerika und seine Politik an den traditionellen Medien vorbei zu kommunizieren. Seine dichtgedrängten „Rallies“, die er in Wahlkampfzeiten in rekordverdächtiger Taktung abhielt, boten ihm die Gelegenheit, neue Stimmungsmacher in der unmittelbaren Interaktion mit tausenden seiner begeisterten Anhänger zu testen und zu verfeinern.

Am 6. Januar hatte Trump dann im Rahmen seiner „Save America“-Rally auch nicht etwa zu wenige, sondern zu viele seiner fanatischsten Anhänger davon überzeugt, dass die Wahl gerade im Begriff sei, im Kapitol gestohlen zu werden, was sie nicht zulassen könnten. Die „alternativen Fakten“ zum Wahlausgang, die Trump seit Wochen immer wieder seinen Anhängern präsentiert hatte, verselbstständigten sich plötzlich. Die Scheinrealität der gefälschten, aber noch zu rettenden Wahl, die Trump bewusst aufgebaut hatte, mündete in einer unzweideutigen Realität der Gewalt. Was seine Überzeugungstalente anbelangt, ist Trump somit nicht etwa seinem nachlassenden Erfolg zum Opfer gefallen, sondern vielmehr ein Opfer seines eigenen Erfolgs geworden.

Zwar hatte Trump in seiner Rede neben allerlei kämpferischem Vokabular auch explizit zu einem friedlichen Protest aufgerufen. Verantwortung für die kriegerischen Fantasien seiner Anhänger trägt er trotzdem. Zudem ist allein schon der Versuch, das Ergebnis einer legitimen Wahl durch Druck von der Straße zu verändern, ein schwerwiegender Verstoß gegen demokratische Normen, selbst wenn die Proteste friedlich geblieben wären.

Trumps Verbündete bleiben nicht ungeschoren

Ein dementsprechendes Schicksal sollte auch einige seiner Unterstützer in der Republikanischen Partei ereilen. Besonders der Senator Ted Cruz, der in der Vergangenheit bereits die Position eines hohen Justizbeamten in Texas innegehabt hatte, dürfte geahnt haben, dass es keine realistische Chance gab, die Bestätigung der Wahlmännerstimmen zu verhindern. Das dürfte Cruz aber nicht sonderlich gestört haben, da er sich seit seiner demütigenden Niederlage gegen Trump im Vorwahlkampf 2016 zu einem engen Verbündeten und Unterstützer Trumps gemausert hatte. Als solcher wird er sich gewiss Chancen ausgerechnet haben, das Erbe von Trumps Wählerschaft mit Blick auf die Nominierung im Jahr 2024 antreten zu können. Trump in seiner vermeintlich harmlosen, aber die Gemüter der Trump-Anhänger bewegenden Anfechtung des Wahlergebnisses zu unterstützen mag für Cruz daher eine vielversprechende politische Kalkulation gewesen haben. Nachdem sich nun aber gezeigt hat, dass das Säen von Misstrauen gegenüber dem Wahlergebnis keinesfalls eine harmlose Idee gewesen ist, bezieht Cruz eine für die Skrupellosigkeit seines Manövers angemessene politische Prügel.

Trumps Präsidentschaft, die ihre Legitimation zum Teil aus dem Versprechen bezog, Elemente der vorherrschenden politischen Kultur einzureißen, wird nun selbst im Eiltempo niedergerissen. Seine Feinde könnten zufrieden sein, denn die tödlichen Ausschreitungen im Kapitol haben ihren Glauben, dass es sich bei Trump vom ersten Tag an um einen quasi-faschistischen Diktator handelte, für sie rückwirkend bestätigt. Der Anlass, ihnen zu widersprechen, ist mit Trumps Abgang im Wesentlichen entfallen.

Ein Abschied nach Trumps Vorstellungen

Trump wird sich also nicht mit einer versöhnlichen Geste aus dem politischen Washington verabschieden. Weder wird er Nachfolger Joe Biden am Weißen Haus willkommen heißen, noch wird er von Biden vor dem Abflug in den präsidentiellen Ruhestand verabschiedet werden. Schon gar nicht wird Trump sich während Bidens Vereidigung genügsam und gesittet in den dekorativen Hintergrund zwischen den anderen ehemaligen Präsidenten einreihen. Vorstellen konnte man es sich ohnehin nicht so recht.

As the heated, divisive, professionally orchestrated multi-billion dollar election campaigns of 2020 are finally coming to their end, the 2016 election is still notably present in people’s minds. While the Biden campaign is praying for 2016 not to repeat itself in terms of polling inaccuracies and unexpected turnout, the Trump campaign is yearning for exactly that.

The 2016 election also occupies a special place in my mind and memory, but for different reasons. The drama of American presidential elections has been fascinating me since I had first seen the movie “Primary Colors”, a competent adaptation of the same-titled book about Bill Clinton’s primary campaign culminating in his nomination for the 1992 presidential election.

However, I had essentially tuned out of the 2016 election campaigns at some point. I was not aware of any clearly defined political programs that Trump and Clinton might have presented. I certainly did not watch any of the so-called presidential debates that rather resembled the trash TV of Jerry Springer than a platform intended for informing the public about the potential future of the country.

As someone with a longstanding interest in politics like me, this was unusual. But it felt like the 2016 election simply had nothing to offer that was worth my interest or that fell in range of what I considered my skills. An economist by training, I considered myself a rationalist in the sense that I thought of myself as a rational person with a strong confidence in logic and reason not only governing my own thinking but essentially also the world. Not all the times, but I would expect the more reasonable opinion with the better evidence on its side to prevail at the end of the day — and if it did not, grave consequences would follow.

Given that I could not identify anything resembling logic or reason in the 2016 election campaigns, I merely considered them much ado about nothing that would eventually turn out the way the experts and reasonable people predicted. So I went to bed in my European time zone during the night of November 8/9, expecting nothing but an unexciting Clinton win, shrugging off the odd tightening in Florida before putting my computer on sleep mode.

When I refreshed my browser early the next morning, the headline of the election ticker changed to TRUMP SURGES. A few hours later, Clinton conceded the election and the world started to become used to the sound of “President-elect Trump”.

The aftermath of the election prompted a boom of attempts to explain and rationalize the unexpected result. A rational explanation attempt was that the U.S.-American median voter in 2016 simply preferred lower over higher taxes, less over more immigration, less than more U.S. military involvement abroad, and fewer than more establishment politics and politicians. While there might have been some truth to that, it would have been not more than a one-size-fits-all-explanation: the election went that way because that is where the voters wanted it to go. But why they wanted it and how they decided that Donald Trump of all people was the one who could take them there would remain unresolved.

The 2016 election result had stunned and energized me at the same time: There was a riddle to unpack but my familiar toolkit suddenly seemed very much inapt for the job. I had to admit that my model for understanding politics and human action had hit a dead end.

Enter Scott Adams. The creator of the Dilbert comic strip embarked on a new career path as a political analyst and commentator when he suggested in his blog as early as in August 2015 that Trump had a pathway to nomination and to victory in 2016. Apparently, Adams had been on to something that many professional observers of politics had missed.

I took notice of Adams’ takes on the 2016 election only in 2017 when I stumbled upon an extensive interview of him by Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report recorded in September 2016. There, Adams elaborated on what he had identified as the strongest element of Trump’s political skill stack: Persuasion. From Adams’ perspective, Trump’s public statements were not nearly as silly and incompetent as most of us perceived them. Instead, to Adams, Trump labelling Jeb Bush as “low energy” and Hillary Clinton as “crooked” was the display of carefully crafted linguistic kill shots that Trump used to create an association in our brains between these negative labels and his opponents that stuck. It further made sense for Trump to use a very simple, braggadocious but visual language and plenty of repetitions to convey an idea of how GREAT a Trump presidency would look like — or conversely, how TERRIBLE a Clinton administration would be. Trump’s entire style of communication, while often repelling and detached from facts and reality, suddenly appeared highly effective in reaching its intended goals when analyzed through the lens that Adams had brought forward.

When hearing this notion about the powers of persuasion for the first time, I was reminded of my high school days when I excelled at analyzing speeches by Kennedy and Lenin that had been so impactful in their times that they had earned themselves their place in history books. Maybe, I thought, my skill set was not that poorly designed for expanding on what Adams suggested really mattered for understanding political discourse and persuasion at an advanced level. By contrast, my academic studies had never encouraged or challenged me in this direction. For many years, this skill was like a muscle left untrained. Now that I had realized the weak spot in my thinking, I could finally start exercising again. The daily livestreams that Adams has been doing from his home studio since 2016, always accompanied by a cup of coffee, have been an inexhaustible source of material in this regard.

Moreover, Scott Adams’ approach to politics is not limited to the identification of a set of rhetorical tricks. Instead, he frames his view on politics as part of his broader understanding of reality. Central to this understanding is the notion that people are not rational. This notion entails that we should no longer expect people to take all the available facts into account or to reach the same conclusions upon being confronted with the same set of facts or even to accept something as a fact unanimously.

“Since my twenties, when I learned hypnosis, I’ve abandoned the idea that anyone is rational, including me. So once you abandon that, the world becomes far less frustrating, not more.” (Scott Adams on the Rubin Report, September 1, 2016)

As an economist, this notion was initially a bitter pill to swallow for me given that modern economics is (in)famously known for putting rationality at the core of its models of human economic behavior. I still think there are many examples of rationality getting the basics right. Most of us do not dance Tango in the middle of a busy road most of the time. Most of us do not spend their whole paycheck on the first day of the month. Most of us do have a pension plan for the distant future. Our institutions and norms are partly forcing or nudging us in the direction of what society considers rational.

But when it comes to other mental compartments, I have grown to accept that rationality in the sense of fully integrating all available information and making unbiased judgements is a shaky presumption, to say the least, and hence not providing much explanatory power for how humans think and act. Behavioral economics has long since integrated the cognitive biases of humans into the framework of economic analysis. Among these biases, Adams refers to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance most frequently.

Confirmation bias makes us preferably select the evidence that is confirming our prior beliefs. Cognitive dissonance, in turn, kicks in when we are nevertheless confronted with evidence or arguments that are incompatible with our beliefs or values. Instead of reevaluating the latter, we will often prefer to misinterpret the evidence in a way that makes it less threatening or to misrepresent the argument in such a way that it discredits our opponent instead of ourselves. Importantly, these biases are not character flaws but rather simple, unconscious mental defensive mechanisms. As a result, political conversations have more and more been resembling two movie-realities playing on one screen, as Adams calls it. Occasionally though, these two realities collide with each other. This is what happened during the famous Cathy Newman interview with Jordan B. Peterson when Newman was simply mentally incapable of accepting any of Peterson’s arguments without twisting them into something that would confirm her negative premonition about Peterson.

Adams has actually put together lists of indicators or “tells” for when somebody is slipping into cognitive dissonance (list 1, list 2). Remember and apply them to the next discussion where you think you have reason and evidence on your side. Over the past few months, I have been fact-checking claims about the coronavirus on Twitter. Trust me, cognitive biases are a thing.

In his book “Win Bigly”, essentially a compilation of the Trump persuasion skill stack, Adams reminisces about one of his 2015/16 predictions that operates at an even higher level: Not only would Trump win the election, but his win and his presidency would rip a hole in the fabric of reality and allow us to look through it, thereby providing us with an opportunity to experience reality in a completely different way. It would be presumptuous to suggest that everyone has shared this experience — but to me, it certainly felt like I have.

However, if the 2016 election and the ensuing Trump presidency were such a gateway drug to this new perspective on reality, why would not more people see it that way, in particular among the professionals who have been making their livings from analyzing politics? Recall that 2016 defied nearly all the rules that the professionals had been living and thinking by. Inevitably, this had to trigger a strong cognitive dissonance reaction on their side. As a consequence, expressions such as “triggered” and “unhinged” have increasingly been attached to once clear-headed analysts and commentators. Entertainers, in turn, who had never considered their reality as being subjected to the rules of logic and rationality seemed to have a much better shot at understanding what was going on regarding the spectacle of the Trump presidency.

Enter Russell Brand. The multi-talented Englishman, who has prospered in his various careers as comedian, actor, writer, activist and podcaster, can be considered an expert in understanding the interactions between an individual speaker and the audience. As such, Trump’s trademark ways of simultaneously playing both the media and his supporters like a fiddle have not slipped his attention. While Brand’s YouTube channel is predominantly populated by conversations about spirituality, meditation, self-help, environmentalism and social justice, Brand has been adding clips of him acknowledging Trump’s persuasion skills while casting doubts on the left-leaning media’s approach of confronting Trump in the gutters of insults and ridicule — because that is where he knows best how to fight back and how to make his enemies lose their minds.

“Any opponent of Donald Trump that has serious intention of displacing him ought to acknowledge: You’re dealing with someone who knows how to play this game in a way that’s not been played before extremely well, is galvanizing his support brilliantly (…), is able to engage in their games of derision (…) with aplomb.” (Russell Brand, June 26, 2020)

This extents to Trump’s approach to the coronavirus situation. Trump’s public health messaging has arguably been detached, in particular as the election is nearing, from everything what a risk-averse evidence-based public health expert would suggest. However, as Brand has pointed out, even his own infection has provided Trump with the opportunity of creating powerful images and messages which he was able to directly communicate to the U.S.-American public. While his messaging is damaging from a public health perspective, it is nevertheless effective — as it appeals to the growing part of the population that simply wants to feel differently about the coronavirus pandemic even if (or rather because) the fundamentals of the pandemic have not really changed.

It is probably not a coincidence that Scott Adams, the hypnotist, and Russell Brand, the spiritualist, have come to very similar conclusions about Trump’s persuasion game. In their own ways, both have been long-term students of the workings of the mind. Apparently, there is little reason to study the mind though if you imagine it as an unbiased computing machine. From this point of view, it has probably not been a coincidence neither that I have become interested in the practice of meditation around the time when I discarded my uber-rational model of the mind.

After all, what is the utility from having gained this new perspective on reality in 2016 beyond a better understanding of politics? You might have noticed that the four years that followed the 2016 election have been a non-stop nightmarish frenzy for most of the media and intellectuals. I am not in a position to question their reasons and motivations, but I may suggest that awareness about when persuasion is at work really helps to preserve a degree of mental sanity when following politics. Clearly, not everybody wants to be sane these days, but I find it much more interesting and revealing to ask myself from time to time how a piece of news or a political speech wants to make me feel instead of whether it makes sense to me at a rational level. The journalist and author of the book “Hate Inc.”, Matt Taibbi, has pointed out that the media has understood that division as a product is selling very well in our times and that as a consequence, the news has become a mental health threat.

I may further claim that it has improved my life quite a bit to presume that people, especially friends, who disagree with me do so simply because they have selectively accepted evidence that I have selectively discarded, and vice versa. Having complemented this presumption with some awareness about cognitive dissonance has driven down the number of useless political fights in my private sphere close to zero.

I am not suggesting it was necessary to know about the ideas and individuals I have mentioned here to grasp a better understanding of what happened in 2016. In fact, I believe our collective understanding of politics and reality has evolved considerably over the past four years anyway, mostly outside the press rooms though. Simply reflect on how you thought politics, news and reality worked in 2015 compared to today.

Complementary, there is very recent evidence from 2020 that the U.S.-American public at large is actually well aware by now that its information is being filtered and that consumers of the news will be shown different versions of reality depending on their political leanings: In a survey of registered voters collected by the Pew Research Center, 67% of U.S. adults say they have seen the news sources they turn to most often present factual information that favors one side of an issue in coverage of the 2020 election. Interestingly, Trump supporters among the sample are about twice as likely as Biden supporters to say that the news sources they turn to most often have reported made-up information that is intended to mislead the public (45% vs. 22%). U.S. adults further believe that partisans cannot agree on basic facts: The vast majority of Americans (85%) say that Trump and Biden supporters cannot agree on basic facts about important issues, while 80% say they think Americans tend to get different facts depending on which news sources they turn to. Hilariously, on the latter two measures, Trump and Biden supporters largely agree.

Hence, in times of political division and non-stop media barrage, we might actually have grown more, not less, aware of our two-movie reality, thanks to the gateway that has opened in front of our eyes. Whether we are willing and able to change anything regarding the political entrenchment and toxicity is a different question. But I am optimistic that what happened in 2016 has rendered us an immensely valuable service that will outlast the immediate political consequences of the election outcomes in both 2016 and 2020.

As we study the numbers on the coronavirus cases and the deaths related to COVID-19, a similar question comes up again and again:

Why is the coronavirus causing so many more deaths in Italy than in other countries?

This question relates both to the absolute number of deaths , which is currently exceeded only in China, and to the case fatality rate, which has risen to 6.6% and exceeds any other country in the world.

To make sure we are all on the same page: The case fatality rate of COVID-19 is the number of confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 divided by the total number of confirmed cases of infections with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The case fatality rate (CFR) should not be confused with the mortality rate or death rate (while it often is confused with them), which is simply the total number of deaths that occur during a specific time frame divided by the number of the total population at approximately the same time. Currently, we are more interested in the CFR because we see the number of cases growing and we want to know how many of these diagnosed cases will result in the death of the patients. The CFR is currently at 0.066 or 6.6% in Italy, 2.1% in France, 0.8% in South Korea, and 0.2% in Germany, according to the latest data collected by worldometer. What explains these immense differences?

The cases behind the case fatality rate

Let us assume every country is equally capable of counting the numerator of the CFR, the fatalities due to COVID-19, and will report them accurately; an assumption that is tolerable if we focus on non-authoritarian high-income countries. What do we then need to know about the denominator, the confirmed cases? The strongest predictors of fatality due to COVID-19 are age and pre-existing conditions of the infected. The number of pre-existing conditions is positively correlated with age, so let us for simplicity only look at the age of the confirmed cases. Clearly, because age is so predictive of death by COVID-19, comparing the case fatality rates across countries only makes sense if the underlying cases of coronavirus have approximately the same age across countries.

What do we know about the age of the people that have been found to be infected with the coronavirus? This information is not easy to find, but it has been popping up in reports and newspapers from the various countries over the past days. The diagrams and figures reported in the following are based on statistics reported by the Korean news agency news1 (screenshot) and the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Grouping the age in ten-year-intervals and comparing the percentage shares of cases that fall into each age group reveals a striking dissimilarity between South Korea (red bars) and Italy (green bars): Recently, 3% of all confirmed cases in South Korea were at least 80 years old. At about the same time, 19.1% of all confirmed cases in Italy were at least 80 years old.

This enormous difference occurred while the absolute numbers of confirmed cases overall were similar in the two countries (8,036 in Italy vs 7,134 in South Korea). Consequently, Italy’s healthcare and hospital system had to take care of a much higher number of infected older patients than the South Korean one — patients that need more intensive care and that are simultaneously more likely to pass away.

A clear implication is that the Italian CFR is not comparable to the Korean CFR — the people infected with the coronavirus that enter the Italian CFR are much older than those that enter the Korean CFR, and as older people are much more likely to die of COVID-19, they push the Italian CFR upwards. Another implication is that explaining the different CFRs with differences in the healthcare and hospital systems between Italy and South Korea might be premature — in the current coronavirus crisis, South Korea’s hospitals and intensive care units have never been tested to the extent that Italy’s currently are.

Which CFR is unusual — Italy’s or South Korea’s?

An obvious question that follows is: Why do these age distributions look so different in the two countries? Many people have already pointed out that Italy has an older population than South Korea. The higher Italian CFR might therefore reflect a higher likelihood that an old person becomes infected with the coronavirus simply because there are more old people among the Italian population. We can easily check the plausibility of this argument by comparing the age structure of the coronavirus cases with the age structure of the total population for both countries. The population data are from the United Nations’ World Population Prospect 2019.

In South Korea, the age structure of the coronavirus cases is remarkably similar to the age structure of the population, in particular for the older age groups. The 20–29-year-olds are still hugely overrepresented among the confirmed cases relative to their population share, but their surplus is balanced by the underrepresentation of cases among the 0–9- and 10–19-year-olds. These three youngest age groups face a very low risk of dying from COVID-19. The South Korean CFR is hence not depressed or exaggerated by an under- or overrepresentation of older Koreans among the confirmed cases.

The same is not true for Italy: The share of confirmed cases at age 70–79 exceeds the population share of this age group by more than a factor of two. Among those aged 80 and more, the case share is almost three times as high as the population share. By contrast, young people and hence low-fatality-risk people are visibly underrepresented among the confirmed cases.

Hence, the question remains why the age distribution of cases is shaped so differently in Italy compared to South Korea. It has also been pointed out that the testing procedures for coronavirus in the countries are very different — Italy has predominantly been testing people with symptoms of a coronavirus infection, while South Korea has been testing basically everyone since the outbreak had become apparent. Consequently, South Korea has detected more asymptomatic, but positive cases of coronavirus than Italy, in particular among young people.

A complementary reason is that the Korean outbreak took place mainly among followers of the Shincheonji megachurch/sect in and around the city of Daegu. Possibly, many followers of this movement are of relatively young age, explaining the unusual spike of cases among the 20–29-year-olds once testing intensified around this group. This might have also prevented the virus from spreading extensively among the Korean elderly so far. With regard to Italy, we do not know who spread the virus among the old population of the North — but the surprisingly high number of tourists that have been diagnosed with coronavirus after returning from trips to Northern Italy suggests that the unnoticed and asymptomatic spread of the virus has probably been going on there for quite some time, building up to then ravage the elderly.

The bottom line is that the coronavirus hit Italy and South Korea very differently in terms of age at around the same time and the same level of the outbreak — at least the level that we noticed in terms of confirmed cases — thereby causing a much higher number of deaths in Italy. An implication is that simply tracing the number of confirmed coronavirus cases by country over time, as many graphs and website currently do, is not telling the full story. The raw number of cases is a rather poor predictor of deaths by COVID-19, at least in the short-run. If the virus spreads predominantly among young people, as appears to have been the case in South Korea, there is no immediate risk of collapse to the hospitals. However, if it spreads to the old population, as in Italy, collapse is looming; and it might be a matter of days. When (not if) this happens is another factor that is hard to predict, as some efforts are underway.

Looking beyond Italy and South Korea

From these two rather polar-opposite cases of Italy and South Korea, what can be learned for other countries? Age aggregates for a subsample of the German confirmed cases of coronavirus have been published by the Robert Koch Institute, which is a German federal government agency responsible for disease control and prevention. Let us assume the subsample is representative. The age aggregates are not the same as in the Italian and Korean data, but cases can still be allocated to two groups: those younger than 60 years and those 60 years or older.

Based on this comparison, Germany has even been a bit “luckier” than South Korea for now, as the coronavirus apparently has been spreading among the younger German population. This finding could be reflected in the currently very low German CFR of 0.2%. The concentration of cases of coronavirus among its younger population might have provided Germany with a bit more time to prepare itself for the moment when the number of infected will rise among its elderly. We have to keep in mind that 29% of Germany’s population is at least 60 years old, according to the Federal Statistical Office.

The French National Health Agency has also published age aggregates of the confirmed cases, but the aggregates are not compatible with those of the other countries. Looking at the French data alone suggests that France represents a scenario somewhere between the Korean and the Italian one, as close to 30% of the French confirmed cases are at least 65 years old.

Again, this pattern could be reflected in the current French CFR of 2.1%, which is ten times higher than the German one, but only 2.5 times higher than the Korean one. In absolute terms, France has already had almost as many deaths as South Korea due to COVID-19, and we should not expect the French death toll to stabilize soon. These are still very few data points and unfortunately, the availability of information on the age of confirmed cases will likely decrease as the case numbers grow and the situation might escalate in more countries.

South Korea provides a useful estimate of the CFR — but no guarantee

We can learn something more that is potentially very useful from the Korean statistics. We have seen above that the age distribution of the confirmed cases corresponds rather closely to the age distribution of the overall population in South Korea if we subsume everyone below age 30 into one group where almost nobody dies from COVID-19. At the time of reporting, 50 of the confirmed 7,134 people infected with the coronavirus had died, implying an aggregate CFR of 0.7%. Since then, the Korean CFR has been creeping up to 0.89%. Hence, 1% seems to be a reasonable estimate of the case fatality rate in a high-income country (!) in the absence of any major failures of the hospital and care system (!). This 1% CFR estimate is close to what Dr. Jeremy Faust has been suggesting based on the Diamond Princess cruise ship case.

Clearly, one of the worst conclusions that could be drawn from this is that the various case fatality rates across countries will settle down at 1% eventually all by themselves. They won’t. Due to the hospital system becoming overwhelmed in Northern Italy, we already have excess mortality there that cannot be undone. Germany, with its low share of individuals infected with the coronavirus at higher age, might have gained some valuable time, but this is just a time lag, it is not a restraint to the coronavirus spreading further to the elderly soon. The relatively high and quickly growing case fatality rates in France and especially in Spain suggest that the virus has already infected a large number of older and vulnerable citizens in these countries. Regarding the US, we are still completely in the dark. Everything that is being said about the need for social distancing and in particular the protection of the elderly remains ever so true.

Update 1 (minor): I corrected a typo: It’s “numerator” and not “nominator”, of course. Thanks to Wei-Hwa Huang for pointing me to it.

Update 2 (attribution): Graphs from this story that had been created by me have been copy-pasted and circulated widely without attribution. Examples of viral tweets: Here (Mark then added the source below), here by Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, here by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and countless others. I believe nobody shared them intentionally without source; it’s just how it went. I created these graphs for the purpose of providing information and I am pleased by how well they have been received. However, content creation, journalism, and science all rely on proper attribution. Please refer to this story as the source of the graphs once you see them being circulated without attribution. Thank you!

Update 3 (one week later): Thanks to everyone who has read, shared, and responded to this story over the past week. A few observations: South Korea’s CFR now stands at 1.09%, Italy is still tormented by excess mortality, probably due to overwhelmed hospitals, and Germany’s CFR remains below 0.5%, while France’s has risen to worrisome 3.57%. At the same time, testing capacities and actual testing have increased in all countries. Obviously, I’m biased, but I interpret these development in the way that the demographic explanations for the varying case fatality rates I outline here do not apply only to short-lived data fragments, but that they fit and predict also sustained trends in case fatality rates.

In the midst of four million people joining the Global Climate Strike, both admirers and critics of Greta Thunberg reflect upon the unprecedented growth and success of the movement that she has been spearheading. Why did the cause for saving the planet break through just now — and why is it so inextricably linked to the persona of the young Swedish activist?

Clearly, there is the cause itself — nothing less than the future of humanity could be at stake if the worst predictions about global warming came true. But one may still wonder: Why is this forceful and energized climate movement led by a teenage girl of all people — instead of a renowned scientist or an experienced political campaigner, for instance?

The teenage activist is able to lead where adults can’t

The reason is that Greta Thunberg can do things that a scientist or a politician could not do, and which are at the same time incredibly effective for getting her message across. Greta Thunberg, because she is a teenager, is allowed to be scared and distrustful about the future and how the adults will (mis-)handle it. She is expected to be angry, upset and impatient about what is and is not being done regarding what she thinks could just as well save or jeopardize her generation’s future. She is at liberty to be emotionally invested and fighting back tears when speaking at the United Nations.

Whereas a scientist would seem unprofessional and a politician would seem phony, Greta Thunberg appears genuine and real because even when reaching up to the highest level of politics, she still remains a teenager with all the worries and anxieties that a teenager is confronted with. It is this genuineness that causes the strong emotional appeal of the whole movement.

Thunberg’s critics are marginalizing themselves

Ironically, it is the same reason that makes her critics lose their heads about her campaign and her personally. For them, it seems like a mystery why the public responds so attentively to a teenager without any academic credentials and without any particular democratic mandate. With Thunberg’s growing success and outreach, her critics have transitioned from mere skepticism about her ideas and opinions to pure desperation while simultaneously ramping up their attacks against her. What they do not realize, however, is that their negative reactions play right into Thunberg’s hands.

Take, for example, the often-heard (and potentially even accurate) complaint that Thunberg and her equally young followers would simply not have the necessary competence to fully grasp the complicated topic of climate change, which is why they would be well-advised to refrain from campaigning so vocally about it. This is in a nutshell the typical complaint that every adult has about every teenager most of the time. The problem arising for the critics is that a much smaller number of adults is willing to admit this publicly. The image of a (potentially male) adult rebuking a teenage girl for being too keen and outspoken about her ideas is simply so unpopular in this day and age that many adults do not by any means want to be associated with it.

Another doomed-to-fail attempt at smearing Thunberg’s public image is to bring up flimsy or flat-out false rumors about her campaign finances or alleged business relationships of her parents. This may well work in the case of professional politicians who are already surrounded by an air of corruption — it does not work in the case of a teenage girl with blond pigtails. It simply does not fit the preconception of the person in question, which is another reason why Greta Thunberg is the ideal figurehead of the climate movement.

To complete the list, the worst possible attack against Thunberg is to say that she should not be heard because she has been diagnosed with Asperger’s and has faced other mental challenges. There is no clearer signal that one does not want to be part of a constructive debate than questioning the mental health of one’s opponent and weaponizing their personal struggles against them. It oozes desperation and infamy.

Greta Thunberg therefore accomplishes two complementary goals by not much more than her own way of being: She gets her message across to those who are inclined to respond positively to it — and she triggers her opponents into launching completely misguided attacks against her that achieve little more than making their initiators appear utterly unlikeable in public.

Not every sceptic is an opponent

However, by far not everyone who does not go along with Thunberg’s message or activism is automatically an opponent of her cause much less a denier of climate change or climate science. They may simply have very different approaches to finding solutions to the challenges than Thunberg’s movement currently represents. Many of these approaches involve technology — such as carbon capture and storage or safer and cleaner nuclear energy — which diminishes their visibility in the current emotionalized and polarized debate.

If these innovative voices were overheard or ignored, the consequences could be as dire as inaction on climate change, in particular for emerging economies that will have to satisfy a growing demand for energy by their populations. If climate change is to be honestly understood as a global challenge to the survival and well-being of humankind, then every productive voice should have its space in the public debate.

The need for reasoned adults in the climate debate

As a consequence, those who have something constructive to say will have to set themselves apart from those who cannot see past their own distaste for Thunberg. The easiest way for the former to accomplish this is to alter how they perceive Greta Thunberg.

At the moment, they see in her an extremely hyped public figure surrounded by political turmoil. If they instead abstracted from her name and prominence, what would be left is a teenager who is scared to death that her young life and the rest of humanity will soon come to an end. How should an exemplary adult, potentially a parent, react when facing an adolescent so possessed by anger and fear? When Thunberg declares in public that she wants to make adults feel the same fear that she is feeling, how is it even possible to not feel compassion for her given that she has dedicated herself to such a depressing cause?

A responsible and truly mature adult would take these fears seriously without being possessed by them, too, and show genuine compassion without being condescending and blinded regarding what could be done to put an end to these fears. This type of adult is currently missing both on the activist and on the political side of the climate issue. Who will step forward first?